


Cathedral Glass

by KrisseyCrystal (IceCreAMS)



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [6]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Lysithea Wants To Help, Marianne is Hard On Herself, Voice Breaking, byleth's there for 2 seconds but it's whatev
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-03-19
Packaged: 2021-02-23 00:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23202514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal
Summary: Marianne’s voice bursts and shatters like glass. Lysithea is forced to listen to the shards of Marianne’s voice, breaking under the teeth of her words.“I’m sorry! I can’t do anything right!”And Lysithea freezes as guilt fills her, thick as tar.
Relationships: Marianne von Edmund & Lysithea von Ordelia
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1648339
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25
Collections: Bad Things Happen Bingo





	Cathedral Glass

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silver_fish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish/gifts).



Lysithea doesn’t see the blast so much as feel it in the earth beneath her boots. The instant the sharp _boom_ shakes monastery stone, all of the students sitting at the tables run to the windows lining the dining wall. Someone shouts, “By the goddess! It looks like a rebound!” and Lysithea _moves._

Memories of her own past ill-met spells flash through her mind. She pushes beyond the murmuring, completely _useless_ cathedral maids and hurtles into the grand corridor of the reception hall. 

Her boots hit the bottom of the stairs.

“L-Lysithea?”

Her white hair fans around her shoulders. Relief crashes into Lysithea so hard, she doesn’t catch the rest of what her classmate asks. Her mind supplies over and over again new recollections, fragmented memories of practice matches and battles against bandits and how Marianne had always been there, right behind them, ready with a hand extended and white magic on her tongue. 

“There’s been an accident at the training grounds--a spell gone amok!” Lysithea explains. “Come on--we need all the help we can get over there!”

“Oh no!” Marianne balks. “But, I don’t know how I…” 

And Lysithea doesn’t understand it. She doesn’t understand Marianne’s hesitance. She doesn’t-- _c_ _annot--_ understand why Marianne suddenly won’t look at her.

“We could really use your help before things get out of hand!” she insists. “Come on! Hurry!”

But Marianne seems only intent on standing with her head bowed and her capable hands idly folded in front of her skirt.

Lysithea bites.

“Fine then--forget it. I’ll go on my own! You can just stand there and stare at the wall.”

And that which is usually too quiet and too soft, too shaky on its way out of Marianne that it could never be of a breakable matter because it’s too formless, too much like water--such a tremulous and fragile thing already--suddenly, it booms. Marianne’s voice bursts and shatters like glass. Lysithea is forced to listen to the shards of Marianne’s voice, breaking under the teeth of her words.

_“I’m sorry! I can’t do anything right!”_

And Lysithea freezes as guilt fills her, thick as tar. 

Marianne runs in the opposite direction of the rebound spell and towards the dorms. 

_Shouldn’t have said that._

She knows; she knows.

* * *

Later, Lysithea follows Marianne’s path to the dorms and apologizes. She decidedly stops biting; perhaps youthfully like the child she refuses to acknowledge she is, she has been careless and aggressive with her words. She wants to take the wounds back, but the damage is done. Lysithea still can only hear the cracking of Marianne’s voice again and again as she says, “It’s all my fault. It’s always my fault. The accident was probably my fault too!”

_Shouldn’t have said that._

What does Lysithea say now?

* * *

What was supposed to be a simple clean-up turns into a fog-enclosed ambush in the remains of the battlefield against the minor lord Lonato and his rebel soldiers. They take down the mage behind the fog, but when the forest clears, no one is happy to see the man’s weathered face as he sits high on his horse, dressed in antiquated armor that hasn’t been used for years until the need of these recent attacks.

Lysithea knows the professor regrets bringing Ashe now.

They corner Lonato. Ashe’s hands shake on his bow as he aims it at his father, though he is careful to keep the width of his shoulders safe, pressed to the wide bark of a hiding tree. As much as he can, Ashe covers Raphael who charges forward with a cry from his stretched mouth and his gauntleted fists swinging. 

Quick as a flash, Lonato strikes Raphael down.

Lysithea is in the cover of the underbrush when she sees the bright burst of red. Raphael doesn’t even shout as he falls. Her hands fly to cover her mouth.

It hits her a second after she hears the mad rustle of leaves beside her that she should do something. She knows a healing spell, doesn’t she? She can--she could--

_“Marianne!”_

Lysithea hears the professor’s voice the same instant her delayed mind recognizes that the blue flashing in front of her is recognizable. Marianne moves like a forest spirit through the clearing, ignoring the heed in her teacher’s voice.

_“Raphael! It’s okay!”_

It is the second time Lysithea has heard Marianne’s voice roar louder than a whisper.

It is the only time she has not heard it break.

Marianne’s hand lands on Raphael’s unbloodied shoulder. Her booted feet stumble onto the broken stone pathway behind his hunkered form. Light bursts around them as Marianne casts her magic. 

Above their heads, Lonato brings up his spear again. His horse rears back.

Marianne throws herself over Raphael’s head, wrapping her arms around him.

There’s a quick and quiet _flit._

Lysithea doesn’t even see the arrow fly.

She only sees its feathered, tapered end protruding suddenly from a thin gap in Lonato’s armor, where his chest plates meet his shoulder guards. She watches as the minor lord’s face slackens from shock to something else, something that no longer moves, as his body falls back off the rump of his panicked horse.

Ashe’s hands shake as he pulls his bow back to his chest.

* * *

“You did it,” Lysithea says later that night, urgently, hoping that Marianne can hear her through the door she refuses to open. “Don’t you see? You did something _good_ , Marianne! You saved Raphael!”

“I did something awful.”

“How can you say that? Because of you, our classmate is alive!”

“But Ashe killed his father! His own _father_ , and it’s _all my fau--_ ” 

Marianne’s voice breaks.

Again.

Lysithea curses the shut door. She tries the handle, but just as it was five minutes ago, it is still firmly locked. She pushes her palm against the center of the ornate wood, but it doesn’t bend. Is there a spell she could use…? 

“How?! I don’t understand this mad insistence of yours, Marianne.” And Lysithea has refused to say those exact words in so many years, ever since her hair was first burned white; they taste dusty on her tongue, now. “How could that possibly be your fault? It was Ashe’s decision. It was _his_ hands that loosened the arrow, _not_ yours!”

“But I was there! If I hadn’t--if I hadn’t rushed them--” She’s trying. There’s a strange twist of both hope and pain in Lysithea’s chest at the sound of Marianne’s stumbled speech. Marianne has always been soft-spoken, but this mutilation of her words is something else entirely. “If I hadn’t--d-done what I--”

“--if you hadn’t done what you did, Raphael would be dead.” 

Marianne doesn’t say anything to that.

Lysithea takes a long, deep breath. With both hands pressed flat to the face of the door, she rests her brow in the space between her thumbs. She stares at the toes of her boots and swallows. 

What does she say now?

“You…aren’t responsible for the choices other people make, Marianne,” she murmurs. “Not Ashe’s choice, or the choice of the mage who’s spell went wrong the other day, or…the choice I made to say what I said, too.” 

Lysithea’s hands fall to her sides.

“You’re only responsible for _your_ choices. And what you chose to do today…saved the life of someone who’s very important to us. That’s amazing. You should be proud of that.”

Lysithea almost falls forward.

In the new space between the door and its frame peeks a wane, tear-streaked face. A wolf-grey eye peers out, wetly shimmering like mercury. Marianne takes a thin breath and lets it go.

“I was so scared.”

“We all were.”

“I didn’t think, I just--”

“--you did the right thing,” Lysithea insists. “And doesn’t that, above all else, show that you’re a better person than you think you are?”

Marianne doesn’t answer.

And they will talk about this more. Lysithea knows they will; she has a very good feeling that they need to. But when Marianne finally opens the door further and holds out her arms for Lysithea to crash into, she pictures the repurposed rose window on the southern face of the cathedral.

She thinks she knows how stained glass came to be.

**Author's Note:**

> THANKS [TAYLO](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silver_fish) FOR THE INCREDIBLE PROMPT I was honestly so glad to get an FE:3H prompt bc I don't show my love for the FE series enough and this was the perfect outlet...plus I'm playing through the Golden Deer route now and came across Lysithea and Marianne's C support and it was perfect and hurtful and WHY don't these two have an A support???
> 
> I digress
> 
> if you want more FE angst, check out my [Bad Things Happen bingo card](https://krisseycrystal.tumblr.com/post/612979528199995392/rated-g-fandom-fire-emblem-three-houses)! There are still some prompts available i would be happy to do


End file.
